Turns out, John Tortorella was exactly the coach this team needed

During the off season, I wondered whether or not John Tortorella --notorious hard ass and infamous win-now coach--was the correct coaching choice to lead this Flyers team through a rebuild. That article was written in the wake of the Tony DeAngelo buyout/flubbed trade, the unceremonious trade of Kevin Hayes, and the drafting of high-skill prospect Matvei Michkov; it looked like Torts was sculpting the Flyers roster in his image, and that his old-school approach put the rebuild in jeopardy--especially with high-octane players Michkov and Cutter Gauthier on the way.

Well, here we are about halfway through the 2023-24 season, and one thing is clear: Torts has shown he\'s got what it takes to coach a rebuilding club.

It was fair to have our doubts. Torts had never coached an openly rebuilding team before, spending the bulk of his career jockeying for playoff positioning and chasing championships. He was also viewed as a defense-first type of coach that was out of place in the ever-faster and more skilled NHL, and the emphasis on defensive play was evident in the Flyers\' 2022-23 season. How was this team going to prepare for young guns Michkov and Gauthier?

Those fears were unfounded, it seems. The name of the game this year has been aggressive offense, and the Flyers are one of the league leaders in scoring off the rush--they\'ve even got the fourth best xGF% in the league with 53.94 xGF%. Crucially, the defensemen aren\'t afraid to take risks in the offensive zone: Sean Walker, Travis Sanheim, and (lately) Cam York have been far more bold; York had the only goal in this weekend\'s 1-0 win over the Red Wings, and Sanheim\'s absence due to illness likely gave York the confidence to make riskier plays in his stead. These systems will serve the team well for when \"The Mad Russian\" and Gauthier arrive in the NHL.

Beyond offense, the removals of Hayes, DeAngelo and Ivan Provorov have shown there really is something to be said for \"addition by subtraction.\" We may never know exactly what transpired in those locker rooms that caused the coach and front office to so sour on these players (TDA\'s five-game scratching at the end of the season, especially), but the on-ice results are incontrovertible. Was it a buy-in issue, where if one player hadn\'t bought into \"the Torts way,\" the whole system fell apart? Was it as simple as bad vibes? Unless someone publishes a tell-all memoir one day, we\'ll probably never know for sure--but the team is playing with a fire and spirit we haven\'t seen in quite some time, if ever.

On a more granular level, individual players have done more than just improve their game under Torts--they have excelled. Owen Tippett, the key piece of the Claude Giroux trade, went from a player struggling to stay in a stacked Florida Panthers lineup to a top-six staple; Tippett set career bests for almost every stat in 2022-23 (including 27 goals), and his underlying numbers this season have improved yet again, even if the goals are a little harder to come by. At 5-on-5, Tippett\'s got 52.47 CF% and 53.69 xG% this year--up from last season\'s 48.62 CF% and 50.26 xGF%.

Travis Konecny has turned into a dynamic goal scorer who wouldn\'t be out of place on the top line of a Stanley Cup contending team. Joel Farabee looks like a top-sixer again after a down year due to neck surgery and has 18 points at 5-on-5. Rookies Tyson Foerster, Bobby Brink and Egor Zamula are getting real opportunities to grow in the NHL. Sanheim has been a revelation after a rocky period with Torts and a near-trade to St. Louis (thanks for invoking that NTC, Torey Krug), and it looks like York\'s finally putting his game together. And while Noah Cates had a rough start to the season before being sidelined with injury, he was receiving Selke and Calder votes last year while learning to play center on the fly--that doesn\'t happen without the faith of Tortorella.

There is, of course, Morgan Frost. Is that situation being handled in an ideal way? That is--and has been--up for debate (let us know in the comments!). Still, Frost is 24 and hardly a \"prospect\" anymore; if that is the one mildly mishandled player on the roster, then frankly that\'s a fair trade for the performance of every one else. We can\'t get so hung up on one player when everything else is a net positive--and lately, Frost has been turning it on:

Another player who\'s turning their career around under Tortorella? Rasmus Ristolainen. Much maligned in Philadelphia for the events that led to his acquisition by the Flyers--namely, paying the Arizona Coyotes to take Shayne Gostisbehere--and subsequent five year, $5.1-million AAV contract, it\'s safe to say the 29-year old defenseman hasn\'t had the smoothest career.

For the last year, however, Risto has looked like an actually good shutdown defenseman. Worth the price of his contract? Never thought it\'d be possible, but...maybe. Take a look at his game score from this weekend\'s match with the Red Wings:

In the absence of Travis Sanheim, Ristolainen stepped into a top-pair role opposite Cam York and flourished in his tenth game of the season. Risto made the big hits he\'s always been known for, but now those hits are killing plays instead of pulling him away from his coverage--he\'s actually playing defense. Sure, it\'s come at the cost of his offense (why\'s he on the power play again?), but if the scoring ever comes back and Risto maintains his defense? That\'s a hell of a second pair defenseman--one that other teams might even be interested in. After that Red Wings game, Ristolainen had some pretty high praise for Tortorella:

Ya gotta feel for the guy: awful coaching in Buffalo hamstrung his career out the gate, and now on the cusp of 30 he\'s finally got a coach teaching him how to play defense .

One thing is clear: Tortorella has the attention, respect, and belief of the players in the room. He has two and a half seasons left on his contract, which means there\'s plenty of time for him to lose the room or for the message to sour but for now, the players seem to not only respect Torts, but genuinely appreciate his coaching insight. If this season is a sign of what\'s to come, then the Flyers are in a pretty good place--and maybe Torts having this much influence over the direction of the rebuild is more of a boon than any of us could\'ve imagined at the outset.

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Turns out, John Tortorella was exactly the coach this team needed

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